


a rose by any other name would still bear thorns

by DummyScreensAndMagazines



Category: Descendants (2015)
Genre: Gen, Jay's Mom, Non-Graphic Violence, Suicide, also ignoring the complete lack of magic on the isle because excuse me, look the enchantress is jay's mom and shenanigans happen, you're telling me that eye thing maleficent and mal do isn't magic?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 22:37:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11217666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DummyScreensAndMagazines/pseuds/DummyScreensAndMagazines
Summary: There are three more children whose blood sings of her curse and she laughs, Jay mimicking her because he is her darling child, her cursed son, her final revenge.-AU where the Enchantress from Beauty and the Beast doesn't take her imprisonment on the Isle lightly.





	a rose by any other name would still bear thorns

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by  
> http://queerauradon.tumblr.com/post/129012731719/this-is-the-most-pointless-ask-youll-ever-get
> 
> Also, I'm tempted to maybe add more. More dealing with the kids, their curse, and how they actually affect Auradon. Also I really want Evie to wear the Enchantress's crown. Let's be real, I probably wrote this as set up for Evie having a giant crown to call her own.

The Enchantress is caught and tossed onto the island and she screams. The sky crackles with her rage. The sea shudders. Before the dome can seal away everything she is, she places one last curse.

“One day your reckoning will come and break everything you have so carefully built! You will fear it for it will wear my blessings as a shield. And until you acknowledge your mistakes, past and present and future, your suffering will know no end.” The power rings from her voice and even once the dome is in place, the Enchantress glaring with full force at King Beast who dared come and witness this humiliation, the words weigh heavily.

Eventually, the curse is forgotten. There’s no need to remember when everything evil and cruel is trapped within the dome.

(The curse lies in wait because the Enchantress held no specifics in her mind and so the magic is left to interpret her words as it sees fit. To be fair, magic is the most fun when left to its own devices.)

But the Enchantress remembers.

There is a weakness to all magic, loopholes or clauses or just general instabilities. No spell is absolute but somehow her fae brethren have forgotten, Maleficent squandering what little ability she has left in rage and the Godmother in forgetting to constantly update the dome. Or maybe she isn’t allowed to on orders of the Beast and that, more than anything, makes the Enchantress smile.

So there is one spot on a hill in the north of the isle, on new and full and blood and blue moons where the magic fades enough for the Enchantress to work her own. Nothing grand, nothing that she dreams of, but enough to weave her speciality, her namesake, into objects. They are weak enchantments, not powerful enough to save a life but good enough to turn the tide.

(They are weak to her because she is capable of so much more. Outside of the isle? They would have been respectably strong enchantments. But the Enchantress is one of the three strongest known fae. Still, it doesn't help that they stole her wand.)

There are bracelets to fortify the body and hairpins for the mind. Rings for swift and steady feet or to stay hands that would dare do harm. Necklaces to enhance or mute natural magic. Earrings to dull or sharpen natural senses, depending on need. Anklets to make the wearer just immune enough to magic that it would be useful off the island.

She makes a locket that takes three years to finish that combines as much of the above as she can. Because all of her jewelry comes from Jafar and she isn’t sure how she becomes pregnant, only that she does and it’s all his fault. 

(A lie, of course. She knew the sex could bear her children. She just forgot her magic wouldn’t prevent such things anymore. She rages.)

He is oddly charming, in a clever and conniving way that doesn’t hide what he is. She appreciates that honesty. There is a kindness in being unrepentantly true to yourself. Nevertheless, she becomes pregnant and spends the next three years creating a locket that will protect her precious child.

Jay is born on a new moon and the Enchantress laughs and laughs and laughs because in him she feels her curse, biding its time and growing until one day it’s ready to lash out at Auradon. She works her enchantments that night on Jay’s body, ensuring that fae and genie both are suppressed and cancel one another, leaving only his father’s talent for magic, his mother’s eye for it, and a humanity that, at the end of it all, both she and Jafar lacked.

The Enchantress walks the island when she’s bored, Jay propped on her hip. She’s unafraid because her enchantments, weak as they are here, as more than strong enough when surrounded by the lack of it everywhere else. There are three more children whose blood sings of her curse and she laughs, Jay mimicking her because he is her darling child, her cursed son, her final revenge.

There is no portrait in the locket she leaves Jay the night she dies. This isn’t even her true face, just the face she is cursed with wearing for the rest of her days. Instead there are directions to her hill, where she will bury every enchanted piece of jewelry she made on this cursed island. One day he will dig them up. One day he will share them among his fellow curse bearers. But now he is barely five years old and the Enchantress knows her time is up.

(Jay does not remember much about his mother. He thinks of her as a cloud of blonde hair that was always laughing. Later, in Auradon, he will pass a rose garden and will be struck dizzy at the memory of her scent. Even surrounded by the horrible stench of the island, she always smelled of roses.)

She leaves Jay with Jafar and climbs to the top of her hill. She leaves all of her jewelry in an iron box and buries it deep. She slits her wrists and lets her blood drip to the ground.

There is magic in rage and blood and death. There is magic is kindness and tears and life, too. Her magic deals in both but for this she cannot be alive. Her curse is anchored. It will play out as it must. But all magic has its price and some part of her knew she would end up here one day, paying all of her debts so none of her time and work was wasted.

(Three fae, three choices. Good, neutral, evil. How could they forget she was doing her job? She used to be the _balance_.)

On the back of her directions to Jay she left a note. It’s a combination of suicide note and explanation and words of wisdom. How much of a lifetime of knowledge can she leave on the back of a folded note shoved into a locket? The most important bit she leaves is ‘I was neutral, my Jay. I gave to each what they deserved and nothing more. I hope, one day, you can do the same.’

(Another lie. She was angry that night with the Beast. And when she twisted his body she hissed, “How do you like people judging you for your appearance?” It’s funny how that part of the tale is never shared. But there were days where she was kind too, just for the sake of being kind. Because sometimes people just have a bad day. Why aren’t all of her actions judged?)

(Jay finds comfort in different words, in ‘There are no good or evil people. Just choices and opinions. What matters most of all is your happiness.’ Jay knows the compact swirls of her writing better than he knows his own.)

Her blood will amplify the magic. Her death will cement it. She laughs because that’s all she can do, alone on the new moon after Jay’s birthday. She is too sad, too angry, to cry. So she laughs and howls at the sky. She bleeds her life into the ground. She bleeds what has been centuries and what could have be centuries more. She hopes all of Auradon feels a shiver running down their spine.

(They do, but it is a rather chilly night and no one thinks much of it.)

Her body is found and disposed of a week later. No one recognizes the gray hag covered in blood so she’s dumped into the sea.

(Eleven years later, her curse fully forgotten, four children are taken from the island into Auradon. They wear her jewelry. People fear them. But in the years as they grow up they slowly but steadily dismantle the empire the Beast worked so hard to build and hold on to. They give the people of Auradon what they deserve, no more and no less.)


End file.
